Denied: Supreme Court turns down GGRA's Healthy SF appeal

After months of waiting, the Supreme Court has finally put forth its decision on the Golden Gate Restaurant Association’s appeal of San Francisco’s health care mandate:

The appeal has been denied, meaning the Supreme Court will not review the city’s Healthy SF plan, essentially upholding the program’s requirement that employers help pay the bill or give their workers health coverage.

Unfortunately for the GGRA, this was the expected decision, especially in light of Obama’s recent recommendation that the Supreme Court turn down the case.

What does this mean? For the GGRA’s legal challenge to the ordinance, there are no further steps that can be taken. According to the GGRA executive director Kevin Westlye, one possible problem — in the long term — will be the confusion of trying to meet both San Francisco mandate and the national mandate, and the fear that they will not overlap. He fears businesses (restaurants) will have to spend more money on adminstrative stuff, as opposed to actual health care.

Says Westlye, “We stood up for our industry and unfortunately the Supreme Court didn’t deem it appropriate to hear the case.”